Submitted

Last Updated May 2, 2023

Financial Inclusion Challenge

Redesigning Governance on a Digital Public Infrastructure

Team Leader

SANDILYA MV

Solution Overview & Team Lead Details

Our Organization

VREV Foundation

What is the name of your solution?

Redesigning Governance on a Digital Public Infrastructure

Provide a one-line summary of your solution.

VREV will Incubate India’s 1st of its kind Digital Public Infrastructure Ecosystem for Governance involving – application developers, Field NGOs & Govts to work on Social welfare & Governance projects. VREV is sector agnostic and takes the approach that a Blockchain is ideal governance projects.

Film your elevator pitch.

What specific problem are you solving?

Within the Financial Inclusion Challenge, sub-point 3 on scaling safe personal identification methods for individuals & families, one of the projects VREV has initiated is a field project on unlocking government sponsored welfare benefits of INR 100 cr+ (~12mn USD) for 10000 Migrant workers and their families.

The Covid pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns severely affected the migrant workers in India, as their livelihoods came to a standstill and they had to migrate back to their villages. Covid exposed the limitations of the welfare system to provide a specific response with a detailed understanding of the target, type and location of the intervention.

Total migrant population in the country is ~10 cr1 specifically related to livelihoods in the informal sector. The details of these migrants are normally available in scattered aggregates across industries, locations, states and departments. The ability to aggregate and respond to the needs of this vulnerable population is currently being debated as Covid has exposed the vulnerability of the government’s response capacity in this area.

Even in a normal (Non-crisis) scenario these workers are vulnerable to uncertain incomes from their informal jobs, handling sudden medical emergencies, supporting their families and all the other vagaries of an informal job market. Since migration also has a seasonal component, the veracity of quickly changing data compromises the effectiveness in the use of the database.

Estimates of population of Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) indicate around 5 Cr. workers2. The governments at the State & Center have instituted the BOCW act to support migrant workers through various schemes across their life stages. Under the Act, the workers are entitled to multiple entitlements, including social security benefits, Maternity benefit, Financial assistance for daughter’s marriage, Critical illness benefit, Scholarship for children, Funeral assistance etc. The approximate cess fund balance in all State Welfare Boards as of 31 March 2021 is around INR 40,000 crore3.

1 - As per the 2016 economic survey by the government of India

2 - Ministry of Labor & employment, Government of India, 2020

3 - Annual Report, 2020-21, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India

What is the VREV approach

To bring relevant technological interventions to bear on the problem that policy is trying to solve both in terms of coverage and contextualisation. This is achieved through a close monitoring of effects, feedback and process - to ensure that the integrity of the intervention is supported. This approach does not explicitly rely on innovation as a pathway but instead focuses on building the capabilities of the system to support the intervention with an objective of making it replicable.

How will VREV do it?

By forming a collective of organizations backed by a Digital Public Infrastructure that can unlock the benefits due to the beneficiaries - managed by VREV Foundation involving, Govt. Labor departments at State & Center, Technology Infrastructure by Dhiway Networks, Social sector ecosystem Led by Field NGOs

https://vrevfoundation.org/wel...

What is your solution?

Within the operating domain of improving governance for ~1.4 Billion citizens of India, the time is ripe for the Introduction & Implementation of a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) that can help Fastrack the actioning of the government’s policies - at the State & Center. To incubate the ecosystem of a DPI for governance in India. VREV’s approach as an Ecosystem Incubator will be in bringing together all the components of creating this DPI - Issuers /Vaults /Verifiers on an Indian Blockchain, Application developers / Mobility device providers and through this socializing the use of governance applications by Citizens.

The field implementation of our solution, in the specific case of Improving welfare to Migrant workers, will involve

Technology ecosystem

Data infrastructure provided in the form of a Public Blockchain that can be accessed by only authorised personnel
Mobile applications that can help beneficiaries access, submit & track their welfare entitlements

Social sector ecosystem

Field NGOs who will evangelize and conduct extensive field work in enrolling beneficiaries and hand-holding them through the onboarding process

Government / Government ecosystem

Respective departments that will collaborate with VREV Foundation on the Digital Public Infrastructure upgrading their IT systems to enable seamless delivery of welfare benefits that are authenticated on the Public Blockchain

https://vrevfoundation.org/wel...

What is the solution -

https://vrevfoundation.org/wp-...

This video depicts an on-ground illustration of the implementation of a Digital Public Infrastructure in availing free housing welfare scheme targeted at the Below Poverty Line households in India.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

VREV’s endeavour of incubating a Digital Public Infrastructure to ease Social welfare delivery and governance can be extended across domains. We have highlighted 2 domains in the previous questions

Improving welfare access to Migrant workers
Improving access to the free housing scheme of the central government targeted at Below Poverty Line households

To extend the scope and possible scale of this DPI - In terms of potential benefits if we consider one Central sector scheme (Direct Benefit transfer to 470mn+ Jan Dhan Bank accounts) and its linkage with Aadhaar (Foundational Identity of Indians), the potential impact would be to 470mn+ citizens.

Reference

In Budget 2022, there are 740 Central sector schemes (Funded & Implemented by the Central Government)
Aadhaar registered citizens, currently at ~1.35 Bn as of Oct 4th, 2022)

Central government runs poverty alleviation schemes targeting 23mn households of the poorest of the poor (Identified as having atleast 3 deprivation criteria or more) with various entitlements that can now be supported through the ecosystem of a Digital Public Infrastructure

How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?

VREV's proposition is supported by

Advisory board (VREV Advisory board) with Senior leadership - Prof. Sadagopan as Mentor of the VREV’s Advisory board and the participation of Hon’ble Mr. N. Sivasailam - IAS [Retd.] & Dr KRV Subramanian (Ex-Prof. BITS Pilani), the team brings In experience of policy making and governance across domains including Open source leaders who bring deep technology understanding
Collaboration to offer a Layer 1 blockchain as a Public Good - VREV Foundation has collaborated with Dhiway Networks in offering a Layer 1 Indian owned & managed Public blockchain as a DPI. This is a population scale infrastructure ready to be deployed for governance projects.
Formulating Industry specific solutions - We have formulated White papers and Solution architectures across – National shipping, Social welfare, Public services, Governance in Education & Health
Incubating a partner ecosystem (VREV's Incubation)- VREV has aligned partners across domains for projects in the governance domain involving multiple stakeholders, negotiations & business discussions.
Advanced discussions for pilot projects - Withing a short term of 3 months, VREV has advanced discussions across domains to initiate National level pilot projects in the governance domain. In effect, VREV’s incubation effort is ready to be deployed at population scale across governance domains

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Create and/or reduce frictions to scale safe personal identification methods for individuals who have been kept out of the formal financial system due to a lack of formal identification

In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?

BENGALURU, INDIA

In what country is your solution team headquartered?

India

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Pilot: An organization testing a product, service, or business model with a small number of users

How many people does your solution currently serve?

Currently we are in the final phase of launching our project to improve welfare to 10000 Migrant workers and in turn impact over 50000 individuals considering most of the migrant workers are the head of their households. This project will go live in June 2023.

Why are you applying to Solve?

Bringing the ecosystem of a Digital Public Infrastructure for governance involves evangelization, multiple stakeholder buy-in and initiating pilots across Domains. With the objective of driving Social impact innovation, we see a strong match in our objectives with that of Solve.

Ecosystem Innovation is critical to realize the vision of Inclusive governance that can reach citizens across all strata of society, removing bottlenecks of Geography, Language, Caste or Class and empowering citizens individually to assert and avail their entitlements.

Our endeavour in the short term is to run multiple pilots and establish proof of concepts and to create a template for an Indian Public Blockchain. The end objective will be to deliver to the government the framework, architecture and a functional ecosystem that runs India’s statutory Digital Public Infrastructure.

Importantly this endeavor can be extended across the world as are other Digital Public goods like the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) and Unique Identification Authority of India’s Aadhaar identity project.

Bringing this vision to reality will need the collaboration with the right teams and organizations across the globe and we see MIT Solve as a key collaborator in this endeavour.

In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?

Financial (e.g. accounting practices, pitching to investors)
Public Relations (e.g. branding/marketing strategy, social and global media)
Technology (e.g. software or hardware, web development/design)

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

KP VINOD